International Human Resource Management-MJ Version

224 International Human Resource Management

powers severely restricted communications among African countries and their
neighbours. Transport infrastructure reflected this in roads and railways being
built to link seaports with mineral sources, rather than to link a country with
its neighbour. Trade was restricted to include only that between colony and
colonial power. Trading blocs are now encouraging more interaction, although
often the legacy of colonial transport infrastructure restricts this. The need to
work with managers and trading partners among post-colonial countries intro-
duces another level of cross-cultural interaction.
Inter-ethnic level Many of the countries of interest are multi-ethnic, often by
virtue of the fact that successive colonial powers have artificially divided up
continents, ignoring indigenous identities. South Africa has 11 official langu-
ages, while India has 18. Cameroon, an African country that was successively
ruled by Germany and then partitioned and jointly administered by France
and Britain, has over 250 language groups, as well as the two official languages
of French and English. ‘Divide and rule’ was a common political strategy for
colonial rulers, and resentments thus created have often extended into the
inter-ethnic tensions witnessed today. Yet in organizations in post-colonial
countries there is great potential to create synergies from multiculturalism.
Extant grand theories of cross-cultural management (e.g. Hofstede, 1980;
Schwartz, 1994; Smith et al., 1996) are inadequate in dealingwith these differ-
ent levels of analysis (see Figure 9.1) where boundaries are often blurred and

FIGURE 9.1

LEVELS OF ANALYSIS

Inter-continental

Power dynamic

Cross-border

Power dynamic

Inter-ethnic

Power dynamic

PPaasstt

Colonial/Indigenous

Economic, military

and ideological

Restricted

cross-national

Political and military

Colonial ‘divide and

rule’

Political and military

PPrreesseenntt

Post-colonial/

Western/Indigenous

Economic, contrac-

tual and ideological

Increased

intra-regional

Political and

economic

Political/power

relations

Political, economic

and sometimes

military

FFuuttuurree

Future hybrid

systems

Contractual and

obligatory

Increased

intra-continental

Economic and

cooperative

Increased synergies

Multiculturalism

Cross-cultural dynamics in post-colonial/neo-colonial societies